Conor McGregor was not happy with Johnny Eblen’s performance in his latest title defense.
The Bellator middleweight champion utilized his world-class grappling skills against Fabian Edwards to score a unanimous decision (48-47, 48-47, 48-47) win at PFL Super Fights: Battle of the Giants in Saudi Arabia on Saturday night.
Conor McGregor isn’t a fan of Johnny Eblen’s fighting style.
Midway through the contest, McGregor took to X – formerly known as Twitter – to talk up his bare-knuckle boxing promotion as the future of combat sports, while condemning the ‘stalling’ going on in recent MMA fights.
“Bare Knuckle is where it’s at,” the UFC superstar tweeted. “The future! And the future is now.”
“There is zero feeling of an event dragging on that is ever so prevalent in today’s MMA. More intense. More deadly. More blood. No room for stalling or escaping collision/impact. It’s sink or swim in bare knuckle. Nowhere to hide. The nastiest, craziest, wildest sport in today’s market.”
McGregor followed that up with a video of him sitting in front of the TV watching Eblen vs Edwards 2.
The Irishman added sarcastic commentary that saw him jokingly marvel at Eblen’s ability to hold his rival.
“Wow! Oh my god! No! What the hell? Wow! Oh my god No way, this can’t be happening right now,” McGregor said with a chuckle.
“Oh my god, he has him, he’s holding him guys! How is he doing this? Oh my god! This guy. F*** off!”
When the fight was over, McGregor returned to claim that stalling wrestlers are killing MMA.
He wrote: “Act like yous aren’t fed up and over this bulls*** all yous want, but I won’t.
“It’s just become the norm nowadays. The product is suffering because of it. If it wasn’t for the brand name already well established it would be well in the bin by now. It is in the bin in the…”
McGregor added: “Resist the urge to connect to the body and hold. Practice framing off the body. Keep the distance to land proper blows. Connecting to the body is holding and stalling. Check me and cowboy. I framed off the body only I never connected to him. If that’s anyone else they are hugging…”
Johnny Eblen is now 2-0 in fights with Fabian Edwards
In their first fight, Edwards had his moments in the fight and even opened up a nasty cut that pushed Eblen to hunt for the finish as the American knew that he could be pulled out by the doctor at any moment.
Eblen dropped Edwards in round three and swarmed to get a vicious knockout finish.
On Saturday night, Eblen went hunting for high head kicks and he even managed to knock his rival off balance at the start of round one before settling into the wrestling game that made him one of the most dominant champions on the PFL/Bellator roster.
It was a strong first five minutes that suggested he would go 2-0 against ‘The Assassin’.
Edwards landed a nice counter shot at the start of the second stanza, but he was made to pay for it as Eblen immediately took him down to the floor.
The challenger struggled to get back to his feet and seemed to be facing a massive uphill battle to get a win over Eblen in his second title attempt.
The first half of the third frame was contested on the feet, but Edwards wasn’t able to get any offense off before he got taken down at the midway point.
However, he did manage to pop back to his feet, remain there, and connect with a few shots to let the champion know that he’s still very much in the fight.
Edwards had occasional success with pop shots but was never able to land more than one or two before he was back on the floor again.
After four rounds he almost certainly needed a KO in the final five minutes, but his UFC star brother Leon Edwards showed that’s possible when he stopped Kamaru Usman in similar circumstances two years ago.
Sadly for him, it didn’t come and he ultimately fell to a close but clear decision defeat.